Kinship Bioassay

Abstract

Heterogeneity among gene pools can be analyzed in three ways: by tests of significance, microtaxonomy, and estimation of relationship. When we consider that two gene pools must be different unless their parents were identical, it seems a sterile abuse of statistical tests to ask whether the gene pools of two groups are significantly different. However finely the anthropologist may subclassify man, the smallest category must be several orders of magnitude greater than the breeding population which concerns the geneticist, who should either be indifferent to microtaxonomic exercises, or appalled to treat our hybridizing species as a clone of bacteria. Therefore, only estimation of relationship provides an appropriate analysis of heterogeneity among gene pools.